Saturday, March 13, 2010

Rain on my parade

Today is Parade Day in America's First Resort, and as the people in their parade floats and kilts marched down Broadway past my house, I did what I usually do during the parade: I slept. Because that's how you spend your mornings when you work the graveyard shift, like I do. In this case, it was just as well, because today the Northeast is enjoying what the folks in New England refer to as a nor'eastah, which is a lot of rain that's driven sideways by a lot of wind.

I slept through the parade last year, too, but on that occasion it was a bright, sunny day with temps in the 50s, so after I woke up I took the dogs out on a nice, long walk. The streets of Newport were full of people taking advantage of the nice weather to get out and about, and needless to say many of them had been drinking steadily for the previous twenty-four hours. There was a lot of screaming, which seems to be a common reaction among certain people to inebriation, and the dogs soon had their fill of that, so we took a side street away from the partying and wandered among the colonial-era architecture. We still passed by an occasional celebrant, but none of them were screaming, so the dogs didn't mind. All in all, a much more pleasant way of spending the day than going out into the wind-lashed rain, which is how we spent a few minutes today while the dogs took care of their business.